


Determiners

by SerpentineJ



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: (most of the way), F/M, Fluff, Sheesh, also rabbits, but not beastality, enough for the rating to be "mature", just a touch of smut at the end, keep your mind out of the gutter, nothing super graphic, whouffaldi, whouffle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 00:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2407763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerpentineJ/pseuds/SerpentineJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara wasn’t sure when he’d gone from “this Doctor” to “the Doctor” and, even more perplexingly, “her Doctor”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Determiners

**Author's Note:**

> Well, these present-tense Whouffaldi oneshots seem to be taking over my brain.

When the Doctor regenerates, Clara is understandably… well, she isn’t exactly sure what to label the feeling swirling ominously in her gut. Equal parts confused and distraught, with a pinch of intrigue and a dash of Time Lord, shaken well by the TARDIS currently crashing around them.

“Kidneys!” He gasps, looking wide-eyed up at her. “I’ve got new kidneys! Oh, I don’t like the color.”

She stutters. “The… color? Of your kidneys?” Her tear-streaked face, the wet trails on her cheeks drying already, glances around. “Doctor, we’re crashing!”

He freezes, looking wildly at the console and the TARDIS coming down around their ears then back at her, and asks, “Do you happen to know how to fly this thing?”

~~~~~~ 

When they are safely parked inside her apartment (don’t ask her how he did it), she drags him into her living room and sits him down. He follows behind, stumbling and nearly falling over, and when he collapses on her sofa she can’t help but feel a pang of pity for him. Regeneration, it seems, is a very tiring process.

The interrogation and get-to-know-you can wait, she decides.

She walks softly into her kitchen and makes tea, the clinking of the china mugs and quiet hiss of the boiling kettle soothing in its normalcy, and when she returns to her companion in the main room with the drinks and some Jammy Dodgers she is marginally more prepared to have the inevitable conversation.

The man on her couch has fallen asleep.

Clara sets the tea tray down and looks him over again. He is older; that much is for certain. The way the tweed suit hangs off his lankier frame and the suspenders are stretched uncomfortably to compensate for his height makes her chest tighten with uncomfortable feeling. She gingerly touches his silver hair, surprised at how…nice it was. Slightly rough, it excites the nerves in her fingers, and it’s curly and short.

His nose is slightly large but it fits in well with the rest of his face, gave it a sharp, mature air, and the eyebrows are the same color as his hair. They are quite fierce, she muses, touching the tip of one fingertip to the left one, though seemingly relaxed in sleep.

His most remarkable feature, though, had to be his eyes. They are lined and piercing, a stormy gray with an almost metallic blue sheen…

She starts as she realized she could see them.

This Doctor is awake.

~~~~~~

“Oh!” She stumbles backwards in surprise, falling into the armchair behind her. “I’m sorry, it’s just that your new face, and I don’t know…”

He groans and struggles upwards, cracking his back. Clara raises an eyebrow. 

“It’s not funny.” He grumbles. “D’you have any food? I’m starved, and new mouth and all.”

She smiles, a small quirk of her lips, and snags the tea tray from where it has been left on the little tea table by the couch and hands him a cup. “Try it black first.”

He eyes the mug and, accepting it, sips gingerly at the steaming liquid. 

“Two sugar cubes.” This Doctor hands the mug back and, after seeing her add the requested amount of sweetness, takes it back, drinking deeply and sighing contentedly. “Thank you, Clara.”

The girl in the armchair notices the way this Doctor says her name: it is shorter, and his accent rolls the “r”.

While she is contemplating the Scottishness(Was that a word? It should be.) of this Doctor, he was watching her.

~~~~~~

“Come onnnnn, Clara!” He practically whines, hanging out of the door to his TARDIS which is parked in her living room. “We can go see the Redor Nebula! Or! Or, the Sontarian twin moons!” The Doctor licks a spot of cream off the spoon he is holding, polishes it on a napkin, and sticks it in his jacket pocket. “It’ll be great fun!”

Clara sighs, smiling nonetheless. “I’ve told you, Doctor, I’ve got plans.” She says from her closet, picking a blouse from its hanger and modeling it in the full-length mirror on her bedroom wall. “Why are you here, anyways? It’s Saturday.” 

He stands outside of her closed bedroom door, practically thrumming with anticipation. “I regenerated! All the rules are out the window.” A frown creases his forehead. “Well, the metaphorical window. Unless you had an actual, physical list of rules, then I suppose you might be able to throw it out the TARDIS door in space.”

The brunette currently hooking a necklace behind her neck pauses and shakes her head. Although the Doctor has gotten a new face, his unbounded enthusiasm has not changed in the slightest. 

“I’m meeting someone for dinner, Doctor, and I have to go. I’m sorry, maybe we can travel next week.” She opens the door and he nearly falls over her, as he had been leaning on the door. 

“Dinner?” His mouth pinches and the silver-gray eyebrows draw together. “We can get dinner. There’s a fantastic restaurant in southern France…”  
Clara sighs again. “I’m going on a date, Doctor.”

His face flashes surprise, before darkening. “Oh. Okay.” The Doctor seems to close off, expression somehow steely. He is more reserved, suddenly, and Clara feels something radiate off him, slick and roiling. “Well,” he says, seemingly hesitating. “Well, I’ll pick you up. Next week. Sometime.”

She doesn’t quite understand his shift in mood.

Neither does he.

~~~~~~

Her Doctor grasps her hand in an iron grip, sprinting swift-footed through the alien hallways.

“Doctor!” She shouts, straining to be heard over the thudding of her rushing blood in her ears. “Where are we going?”

He yells back. “Somewhere else! Where there’s no-one chasing us!”

They hurtles into the TARDIS and the Doctor is flipping switches and twisting knobs frantically, a restrained, manic energy pulsating about him. He slams the large lever and the warping, undulating tenor of the time machine echoed through the room. Clara collapses in her Doctor’s leather wingback chair (which is really quite comfortable, not that she’ll ever tell him that), and sighs, exhausted after their escape.

He looks up and snorted amusedly and she glances at him questioningly, saying, “What’s so funny?”

“Did you know,” the man in the magician’s coat responds, “that you look like a Rendooni rabbit when you’re tired?”

It is her turn to huff, though this time in slightly staged annoyance. “I don’t know what a ‘Rendooni rabbit’ looks like, but I do not look like one.”

Her Doctor laughs now, a full-hearted chuckle that reverberates lowly through the room, and leans against the TARDIS console.

“You’ve got the posture,” he says, “and your hair is the same color as their fur.”

She sags further into the warm leather, too tired to continue the argument. 

~~~~~~

He presses her to the console of the TARDIS, gripping the nape of her neck with one hand and her waist with another. She has her arms looped around his neck, one anchored firmly in his short gray hair, pressing him closer.

“Mmm.” He separates his lips from hers with a smirk and a glance, and she looks slightly dazedly up at him, though lucidity slowly returns to her features.

Clara pouts slightly, exaggerating her bottom lip and using her best glance-up-through-the-eyelashes. ”Why’d you stop? I was quite enjoying it.”

The Doctor- her Doctor- brushes her hair behind her ear, still keeping her pinned (not that she had any objections) against the metal of the time machine.

“Didn't want to rush it.” He leans down slightly to nip at the tip of her ear and nuzzle at her jawline. “Wanted to take it slow.”

She makes an agreeable noise and melts deeper into him, relishing his warmth and the spicy, heady aroma that seems to radiate from his skin.

The Time Lord moves further down, tracing the edge of her collarbone with the tip of his prominent nose, and presses his lips to the dip in the center, where the skin is soft and vanilla-scented. She can feel him smirk against her skin as she groans and presses upwards, trying to get more than the teasingly light touches on her skin.

“Mmm.” He’s unbuttoning her blouse, imprinting light, warm kisses where his nimble fingers have undone the buttons. Clara feels each ministration like a warm flame to her skin, enhancing the flush in her fingertips and the tightening in her lower regions. “Already so eager. I wonder what I could do to you?” He fingered the second to last button on her shirt. “I do have a time machine, after all, so I literally have all the time in the world.”

She’s moaning because damn, that’s fucking hot, and before she knows it her hand is coming up to toy with her nipple through her bra. He seizes the wandering appendage and pins it to the console she’s still backed up against, only to release it a moment later.

“These clothes really are restrictive, though.” The Doctor murmurs in her ear and holy sweet mother of God, a man of his age should not be able to make her soak straight through her panties (though she’s long since come to terms with the fact that yes, he’s a centuries-old time travelling alien who changes his face and yes, she’s hopelessly in love with him). “We should do something about that.”

There’s quite a lot of teasing, she’ll later reflect, as he seems to take a certain pleasure in moving as slowly as possible, ensuring she really feels every brush of his long, calloused fingertips over her skin.

She looks up, deciding it’s his turn to be flustered, and surges upwards, more ferocious and fiery in her demands. Within a minute she has their positions reversed; he’s pressed against the metal, just short of gasping, the magician’s coat is on a chair halfway across the room, his mauve shirt is unbuttoned and askew and her hands are deftly undoing his belt buckle.

“Who’s the boss now?’ She murmurs up at him, relishing the flush that stains his cheeks and the sharp intake of breath that coincides with her slipping her hand down his pants.

The Doctor all but glares down at her, face flushed and hair mussed, and there’s a flurry of movement. Before she knows it she’s in his arms, headed towards the lower decks of the TARDIS.

“Doctor!” She squeals (Clara will say later she merely “protested vehemently”. The Doctor will laugh and kiss her cheek.). “Where are we going?”

“My,” he pauses to leap down several steps, causing Clara to tighten her grip around his neck. “Bedroom.”

She smirks up at him. “I can get behind that idea very much.”

~~~~~~

Two minutes later they are sprawled on his bed, each trying to get the other’s clothes off first.

“Why’d you carry me here?” She asks, pausing for a second.

“Because you’re so short, it’s easy.”

“Hey! I am not short! You’re just… abnormally tall! 5 foot 2 is-“

Rolling his eyes, he busies her lips with his. Maybe he’ll tell her later how adorable her height is.

**Author's Note:**

> What did you think? I't love to hear it! Even if it's a 5 paragraph essay about how it sucked, as long as yout ell my why it sucked. Criticism (of the good kind) is the food of authors. Well, that and awesome reviewer's reviews.


End file.
